


The Wolf with the Red Roses

by TheVoiceofWrath (meet_your_fate)



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Fluff, Humor, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-15
Updated: 2011-03-15
Packaged: 2017-10-16 23:45:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meet_your_fate/pseuds/TheVoiceofWrath
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Sylar figures it out.</p><p>This is road trip adorableness with just a side of cussing and murder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Wolf with the Red Roses

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place before and after the scene where 'Psycho Killer' played on the radio. It was my first ever Heroes fic and the titled is shamelessly stolen from the Meatloaf song 'You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth', which I also have playing on the radio at the end of this fic. Credit where credit is due and all that.
> 
> [Edit 1/28/2017: I had some unkind ableist words in here that I have now removed. I apologize. I would have removed them sooner if I had remembered they were there.]

When Luke finally wakes up, Sylar’s been driving for a few hours with the radio on to stifle the silence. He’d been propped up in the passenger seat but he fell against the door, so the first thing Luke does is lever himself upright and groan. Sylar figures the combination of electric shock and the drugs must have done a number on him, by the way he’s rubbing at his head. He glances at Sylar for a moment. Not for long enough to see what’s on his mind.

“Pull over,” he mumbles quietly. Sylar considers ignoring the request, but then realizes that the kid might need to throw up or something.

“Why?”

“Just pull the fuck over!” And that’s not at all quiet; it’s shocking. Who does this punk think he is, yelling at a killer like that? Does he have a death wish? So Sylar pulls over on the lifeless highway. He’s just about to let Luke know what’s what when the passenger door opens and slams and the kid is walking into the grass and bending over with his hands on his knees. Sick, then. Why didn’t he just say? Sylar would have been all for pulling over; no one wants to be in a car that smells like puke. He contemplates going after him, but decides not to. He doesn’t want to smell it at all if he can help it.

Sylar watches. He hasn’t seen any vomit yet, but he might have missed it when he wasn’t sure what was happening. It just looks like Luke is breathing really deeply and maybe he’s having a panic attack instead of puking. That would explain the yelling, not that Sylar’s going to let him off that easily. Luke stands up and his hands fall into fists at his sides and his entire body seems to shake. That doesn’t seem like a panic attack. That seems like rage. Like maybe he’s concentrating on holding his microwave particles back with everything he’s got. Sylar still isn’t sure what’s happening. He doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on.

And all of a sudden, it’s like the storm is over. The kid turns to the truck Sylar stole and makes his way back. He’s not looking at Sylar, which is strange, because it’s like he’s always looking at Sylar. He opens the door that goes to the back seat and grabs his bag that Sylar moved from the station wagon for him. He shuts the back door. And then he walks away, parallel to the road. Sylar is stunned. So Luke is angry; angry at Sylar. Which, what the fuck, Sylar saved his ass back there and he’s mad? Now Sylar is pissed. He gets out of the truck and follows after him.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he growls and is ignored; Sylar’s never handled being ignored very well. “I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m getting back in the truck and I’m leaving, with or without you.”

Luke laughs humorlessly and keeps walking. Sylar is seriously considering killing him. He’s seeing scarlet. He grabs Luke’s arm and spins him around so that they’re facing each other. It’s the first he’s really gotten a look at Luke’s face since he woke up. His eyes are red like maybe he’s been crying, but right now they’re furious.

“You have no reason to be mad at me! I saved your life!” Sylar reasons in an angry, feral, homicidal voice. That probably doesn’t count as reason.

“No reason!” Luke screams while he tries and fails to yank his arm free of Sylar’s grasp. His voice breaks. “You wouldn’t have had to save my life if you hadn’t left me in the first place! How am I ever supposed to trust that you’ll have my back, like I had yours, ever again now that I know you’ll abandon me!? I thought that… But I was wrong! So let me go! I’m leaving!”

What is he supposed to say to that? It’s all true. The Gabriel in him feels like crying for some stupid reason and Sylar gets even angrier at the implication that any part of him feels like crying. Sylar’s not sure why he’s making such a big deal out of this. He should just let the kid go. It’s the best case scenario. But he wants this to happen on his terms, not because a teenager has the notion that Sylar should be trustworthy. So it’s important to him that he gets Luke back into the truck.

“You knew all along that you couldn’t trust me. I told you that! You know that I’m a serial killer who targets people just like you! Don’t you think it could be worse!? Don’t you think being taken by agents is better than having your head cut open and your brain played with!?”

“Don’t you think that, if you were gonna kill me and steal my ability, you’d have done it already? That you never would have walked out of my mom’s house while my heart was still beating? I’m not afraid of being murdered!” And Luke has a point. Honestly, there wasn’t any reason for letting him live in the beginning. He’d have been able to torture the information out of him. He didn’t have to bring him along on a road trip. He lets go of Luke’s arm.

“What are you’re afraid of, then?” And the kid is afraid, ever since this whole trip started. Luke drops his eyes to the ground and doesn’t answer. Sylar doesn’t know which is worse; not getting an answer or being lied to. Because, there’s no way Luke is going to tell him the truth. Not about this and not about anything else that he doesn’t absolutely have to. “Answer me.”

Luke never raises his eyes, but he does answer and it’s the truth. Like maybe not looking will make it easier. “The shrink my mom made me go to thinks that I have ‘father issues’. I just think that I’m sick and tired of being overlooked, underestimated, ignored… left behind. So I’m leaving, because you’re just like everybody else.”

His shoulders kind of fold in like he’s anticipating being hit, which isn’t exactly a bad idea. Sylar should hit him. Sylar isn’t like anybody else. He’s special; unique. There’s not a single being on the face of this godforsaken planet like him. But he doesn’t hit him. Luke may not have been entirely correct, but the theory is sound. Sylar had left, just like everybody else.

“What do you expect me to do? Hold your hand and drag you along with me, let you slow me down?” And Sylar knows it’s cruel, to drive home the inconvenience of having Luke around. No one ever accused him of being nice. The kid seems to get smaller, like he’s trying to disappear and he still hasn’t looked back up.

“I expect you to get back in the truck and drive away without me. Like you said; you wouldn’t want to be slowed down.” Luke tries to discretely raise a hand to wipe at his eyes and fails miserably. He’s honestly crying. And isn’t that just terrible? Leave it to Sylar to make someone so heartbroken that they cry about the idea of being apart from him.

Sylar reaches out and takes Luke’s jaw in his hand, ignoring the way he flinches at the contact, and raises the boy’s head so he can see his face better. He’s got tears running down his cheeks and his eyes are puffy, and something deep inside Sylar that’s been dormant comes back to life. He doesn’t know what it is and he doesn’t want to. He just wants to put this all behind them and move on. He wonders when exactly it became about them instead of him. Probably when he saw the kid go down in the parking lot with that betrayed look on his face. When he speaks, it’s with more tenderness than he intends, but the words are by no means tender. “Get in the goddamn truck.”

And Luke looks so confused. He has every right to be confused. Sylar can admit that he’s being kind of hot and cold. Luke probably figures that he’s being toyed with. He pulls his head back so that he can wipe the tears away and compose himself, but he doesn’t hide his face. He’s silent for a moment before he clears his throat.

“Next time you abandon me, can you do it under better circumstances? Like warn me or drop me at a bus station or something, because that was crap back there.” He says it with a microscopic smile on his face and Sylar knows they’ll be alright. He knows that Luke will get in the truck and follow Sylar wherever he wants to go. Sylar suddenly feels undeserving of such blind faith. Luke knows who he is, what he’s done and will keep doing, that Sylar is only out for himself, that Sylar will leave, and he stays anyway. Sylar ignores the voice telling him to set the boy free before something terrible happens because, while he might not deserve this, he still wants it and he’s never felt like such a monster before in his entire life. He takes Luke’s bag and carries it back to the truck like that will somehow make this arrangement even. He gets inside and Luke follows.

 

Some time passes in silence, but it’s not as oppressive as when Luke was unconscious. It’s almost peaceful, except for the part where it’s strange. Luke always makes noise. Now it’s just the gentle in and out of his breath. No humming or bouncing. It’s unnerving. Sylar has the distinct impression that Luke isn’t quite done talking.

When it finally happens, it’s not so bad. “Thanks for coming back for me.”

“I didn’t come back for you; I came back for this,” he says, gesturing with his eyes to the laptop he stole that sat on the back seat. “You just happened to be there.”

“Mhmm,” like he doesn’t believe a word Sylar’s saying. Like he knows there’s a part of Sylar that is good and genuinely sorry for having left him. Sylar hopes he’s wrong because that would just make things more complicated. Sylar has this contrary little voice in his head that tells him how smart Luke really is, seeing through his bullshit so well.

“Tracked me twice in less than a week. I knew if I kept driving it was only a matter of time before they caught up to me again; I needed to understand how they work.” And it’s the truth. Only, he hadn’t really thought about it until those agents were dead and he was practically wading in their blood.

“Still, you could’ve just left me.” Luke’s a mother fucking mind ninja and, even worse, he knows it. Sylar turns on the radio in retreat. Actual retreat. Like Luke won something and Sylar doesn’t want to acknowledge it. But then the song starts and if he wasn’t a little bit pissed before, he is now. He’s also kind of worried because Luke laughs. Sylar supposes it’s ironic to have ‘Psycho Killer’ play with a murderer in the car, but shouldn’t it be an uncomfortable reminder that you’re in a car with a serial killer? He wonders what other things Luke talked to his shrink about and if there was anything to explain why he was so comfortable in this bizarre situation. And Sylar isn’t a psycho killer. He’s perfectly sane. It’s a very important distinction. Sylar doesn’t change the station; that’d be like admitting defeat.

It's one a.m. when Luke’s stomach protests the fact that they haven’t eaten since everything happened. Sylar’s surprised it took so long. He remembers being seventeen and how he was always hungry. He’d have stopped earlier but he thought that they needed to make some real time to lose the heat that would be on them after the fiasco earlier.

“We’ll get off on the next exit and see if there’s someplace that’s open twenty-four hours. And if there’s not, then they’ll have vending machines at whatever skeazy motel we can find,” Sylar offers but Luke just makes a non-committal noise, like maybe diners and vending machines and skeazy motels aren’t as exciting as they used to be.

It turns out the town at the next exit doesn’t have any twenty-four hour diners or skeazy motels. It’s a quaint little town that thinks it’s touristy and Sylar can’t for the life of him figure out why. There’s nothing spectacular about it. He doesn’t bother remembering its name. There’s a Best Western and a Holiday Inn and Sylar thinks that, were he a lesser man, he might be sick. Where’s a Motel 6 when you need one?

He doesn’t want to attract attention. Showing up at a Holiday fucking Inn at one in the goddamned morning with a teenaged boy and having evil vibes like Sylar tends to have more often than not is going to attract attention; probably the ‘call the police’ kind of attention. He drives around thinking and Luke is giving him a weird look because he’s going around in circles and Sylar doesn’t know what to do. He’s hungry and tired and so is Luke and maybe there’s a better place at the exit after this one and maybe there isn’t. He sighs as he pulls into the Best Western, just because he thinks they’re less tacky than Holiday Inn. He tells Luke to stay in the car and Luke doesn’t argue. He must understand how terrible this is then.

Sylar shudders as he walks through the automatic doors and into the lobby. There’s fake vegetation and too much light and Sylar hates it here. He sucks it up and walks over to the woman behind the counter. She’s painting her nails a fuchsia color that doesn’t match her navy blue uniform at all. Sylar thinks that he should kill her on principle. She just doesn’t deserve to live. He waits for a moment before he realizes that he’s being ignored. He rings the bell between them as loudly and obnoxiously as possible because he hates being ignored. She snaps her gum and rolls her eyes and huffs and bounces on her heels and sets her nail polish brush in the little jar of paint and she seems to do this all at once. Sylar is determined to kill her before he leaves this crap town because she obviously has some sort of ability. If being a horrible waste of flesh counts as an ability, that is. He doesn’t even want it. He just wants to know.

“What?” she says, except she puts a strange emphasis on the ‘h’ and the ‘t’ so it sounds like a really complicated two syllable word. And now Sylar is resolute in his decision to kill her because he hates her with every fiber of his being. But room first, murder later. He concentrates on sounding polite. He doesn’t quite succeed.

“I’d like a room.”

“For when?” She looks at the monitor and taps a few keys like he actually came in at one in the morning to make a reservation for some other night.

Sylar blinks very slowly and grinds his teeth together. “For now.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” she says as she goes back to her nails. His eye twitches.

“And why is that?” She has the audacity to look up at him like he’s the stupid one.

“Because there’s this super huge scrap booking convention in town this week. Duh?” And Sylar’s tempted to go nuclear where he stands and blow this entire fucking town into oblivion, but then he remembers that he hasn’t gotten that one to work since the company gave him the Shanti virus. So instead, he says ‘thank you’ like it’s the worst curse in the English language and walks out of view of the cameras. When someone finds her, all of the evidence will point to her having stabbed herself in the carotid artery with a ‘Best Western’ complimentary pen. Sylar feels a little bit better until he gets to the car and Luke is keeled over with laughter. He looks out the windshield and sees that Luke had a perfect view of everything that happened. Sylar’s a little disappointed that he let Luke see him lose his cool like that. But still…

“She fucking deserved it.” And it’s the truth. She really, truly did. Luke laughs all the way to the Holiday Inn.

Luke decides that he has to go in just incase the clerk isn’t helpful, because it’s only fair that he gets to kill an annoying desk person, too. Sylar concedes. At least they won’t be able to draw a connection from the surveillance videos because he was one person at the Best Western and here, there are two of them.

The lobby is worse here because they used the greenish shade in the Holiday Inn logo as the primary color. It’s disgusting and Sylar thinks that he’d be glad to sleep in the truck. Then he remembers that the truck has zero room for sprawling. It’s not like the spacious station wagon. They walk up to the clerk, a man this time, who seems to be actually doing the ‘greeter’ part of his job rather well; maybe a little too well for one in the morning. He might be on something.

“Hello, welcome to the Holiday Inn! My name is David! What can I do for you on this lovely evening?” So he isn’t on anything; he’s just incredibly flamboyant.

“We need a room.” And just like that, Sylar knows he’s said something wrong because David has this ‘Ooooo, scandal; hurrah!!!’ look on his face and Luke stares at the wall and blushes. Oh. No. He didn’t mean it like that. “A double room, if you don’t mind keeping your assumptions to yourself.”

“Oh yes, a double room of course,” he says as he waves his hand and winks. Sylar has the distinct impression that something’s going on that he doesn’t completely understand. “You boys are lucky; this is the last room in the whole joint. There’s this amazing scrap booking convention in town. Oh, I’m sure that’s why you’re here. That’s why everyone is here.”

David goes on and on and on, and he doesn’t even care that Sylar and Luke are completely ignoring him. He gets done registering them and Sylar pays with cash and uses an alias, Kyle R. Mills, which almost makes Luke crack up, but he manages to keep it together. Sylar asks where the vending machines are and David tells him, but says that room service is available until two.

“You boys have a fun night!” David calls after them and Sylar doesn’t like the implication that any fun is going to be had at all. David’s going to remember them being here. As if sensing his train of thought, Luke perks up and rubs his fingers together. Sylar shakes his head no and leads his way to the vending machines. They’re not going to get room service. They shouldn’t even be in this godforsaken place. Besides, what if David gets to the room service people and convinces them to bring strawberries and whip cream and chocolate sauce or something? That’d be a disaster. And Sylar is starting to think that Luke can read minds because he starts laughing again. Sylar looks at him with an eyebrow raised.

“Oh god, what about that wasn’t hilarious? He was all ‘double room, uh huh, wink’ and then he was like ‘you should get room service’”. Luke accents his verbal and physical wink by touching his cheek with his index finger. It’s a strange mannerism that Sylar’s never seen before and he wonders if it’s supposed to make the outrageously fake wink seem even more outrageously fake. He chuckles a bit. They make fun of David and talk about exactly why that bitch deserved it as they spend ten dollars in the vending machines. They’re carrying luggage and bottles and candy bars and bags of chips and the laptop when they get to the room, so it takes a minute for Sylar to fish the keycard out of his back pocket using his fingers because you can’t use telekinesis in a public hallway if you’re trying to stay under the radar. When he gets the door open and sees the solitary bed inside, nothing’s funny anymore and he pushes his food into Luke’s arms and drops his bag and turns to make his way back down to murder David.

“Hold on, Sylar; you said I could do it. But that wouldn’t even change anything because he said this was the last room.” And damnit, the kid’s right. One of them is sleeping on the floor then and it sure as hell isn’t going to be Sylar. He growls as he picks up his bag and strides into the room, because striding is angry walking. He tosses his bag on the bed and lands beside it, leaving Luke to manage all the food, his bag, and the door. Luke drops his bag on the dresser and piles the food on the bed. He grabs his Dr. Pepper and Doritos and sits in the chair by the table and digs in. Sylar sighs. What a fucking day. Seriously.

Sylar sits up and drags the laptop over, opening it up and turning it on. Only, it doesn’t turn on. Son of a bitch. Some unidentifiable gore must have made its way inside. Sylar’s going to have to fix it. He’s struck by the saying, ‘when it rains, it pours.’ He totally gets it now; one fucking thing right after the next. He shuts the laptop and looks through the pile of junk food. He sees a bag of microwave popcorn wrapped in cellophane and wonders how he missed Luke getting this. He holds the bag up and looks at Luke.

“What, exactly, is the objective behind using your power to make popcorn?” Sylar asks as condescendingly as he can manage, which turns out to be extremely condescending. Luke smiles a huge, face wrinkling grin.

“To eat,” he says as he stands up and moves over to the foot of the bed, sitting down and taking the popcorn. He unwraps it and reads the instructions, like he can actually set his hand on high for two and a half minutes. Sylar chuckles and wonders if Luke can manage TV dinners and Hot Pockets. They could get a cooler and eat halfway decent on the road. If this popcorn things works out, they might have to try it.

Luke sets the bag in his left hand and raises his right beside it, careful to point away from anything within range that might burst into flames or melt. He gnaws on his lower lip in concentration and the bag starts expanding and kernels start popping. Sylar realizes that Luke’s power is insanely practical. He’d never have to drink cold coffee again if he had that power. But, he could just have Luke nuke his coffee for him. It wouldn’t be hard to delegate keeping the coffee warm to the kid. It’s not like it’s a huge responsibility. And if he falls down on the job, Sylar can always give him a ‘why is my coffee not steaming?’ look. He’d raise his eyes from his coffee and stare at the kid with an eyebrow arched until he reaches a hand out and the coffee is hot. And just like that, Sylar knows that he’s never going to kill Luke or abandon him again. After all; someone’s got to be in charge of keeping his coffee hot.

The bag stops popping and Luke looks insanely pleased. He passes the bag to Sylar to prove to him how awesome he is or to offer Sylar first dibs, Sylar doesn’t know which. He takes the bag an opens it. It’s perfect. It doesn’t even smell a little bit burnt. Why Sylar didn’t think of using food to teach the boy control, he’ll never know. It’s a good plan. Luke will need all the practice he can get if he’s going to keep up with Sylar. It’s the extra buttery kind and Sylar’s always loved extra butter on his popcorn. He eats some and hums in contentment.

“You’ve got butter running down your arm,” he says to Luke because it’s true, and how the kid didn’t notice Sylar has no idea. Maybe he’s got some kind of immunity to hot things. That’d go well with his microwave ability. Or maybe the kid’s done this before and hot butter on the sensitive skin of his inner wrist is no big thing. Luke hurries to lick it off before it gets all over his clothes. And it’s totally normal for the kid to use his tongue, because why would anyone waste perfectly good butter on a napkin? But that part inside of him that came out of hibernation earlier, and Sylar’s pretending he doesn’t know anything about, starts doing summersaults. Sylar does what he always does; ignores it and adds it to the list of things he’s in denial about.

He hands the popcorn to Luke and sits back against the headboard, reaching for the remote on the bedside table. He turns the TV on and flips around but can’t really concentrate because Luke is sitting on the foot of the bed and moving around in his field of view. Sylar sighs. He’s too lazy to bother with it so he uses his telekinesis to move his bag and the laptop off the bed and to the floor. And to bring the food up closer so he can reach it. Luke looks back at him with a question in his eyes. That’s right; there wasn’t really an objective to that display of power. Sylar’s just being slothful. Sue him. He indicates the spot next to him with his eyes. Luke kicks off his shoes and crawls towards the headboard on his knees without ever getting off the bed. He settles in and Sylar decides that the only thing on is reruns on the Game Show Network. So that’s what they watch. They eat junk food and joke around and laugh and play along with the games and sometimes Luke beats Sylar, but not often enough to matter. Eventually they fall asleep on the bed and Sylar doesn’t make the kid bunk on the floor because he’s tired and something like happy and he just can’t bring himself to.

 

Sylar wakes up around ten in the morning with his nose in curly brown hair. It takes a second to remember why there would be curly brown hair so close to his nose. Oh yeah; that dick of a clerk and the one bed situation. Luke’s face is buried in the space between Sylar’s shoulder and his ear and Sylar’s nose apparently decided that Luke’s hair smelled good during the course of the night. Sylar has one arm wrapped around the boy and Luke has a hand fisted in the front of Sylar’s shirt. Their legs are tangled together. Sylar wonders why his body would do this to him, the traitor. There’s no way he’s going to be able to pull away from Luke without waking him up. Or, there shouldn’t be, but Sylar somehow manages it. He thinks it might not be because of his natural stealthy talent, but rather because Luke is a seventeen year old boy who’s in the very deepest stages of unconsciousness. If Sylar ever gets asked, though, he’s going to say that it was all him.

When he comes back from the bathroom all showered and dressed and ready to go, Luke hasn’t moved a muscle. He’s still sprawled out the exact way Sylar left him. His hand is clenching the blankets where Sylar’s upper torso had been. Checkout’s not for another hour. Sylar picks up the laptop and sits down at the table to take a look at. He lets Luke sleep for a little while longer.

 

It turns out that Sylar lets Luke sleep too long. They almost miss their checkout. There’s a different clerk and Sylar’s disappointed that he didn’t get to kill David. They toss their things in the back seat of the truck and Sylar drives them out of the parking lot. Luke laughs when they see the news team at the Best Western. Sylar smiles.

Sylar gets onto the highway and Luke looks at him confusedly. Sylar doesn’t want to stay in this hellhole for another minute, not even to eat, though he’s starving and he’s sure Luke is, too. Junk food is fun to eat, but not very filling. “We’ll eat in a little bit.”

Luke nods like he understands. He probably does. They make it about twenty minutes before Luke’s stomach growls like an angry bear. Luke looks down at it like he’s never heard it make that noise before and maybe he hasn’t. There’s no reason for him to have ever been so hungry. He glances at Sylar with a mortified expression and his face is flush with embarrassment. “Sorry.”

Sylar pulls off in the next hellhole town and parks in front of an IHOP. Luke’s getting them a table before Sylar even makes it inside. He smirks when he sits down in the booth across from the kid, who’s already looking at a menu with his eyes open wide like IHOP has the best food in the entire fucking world. For Christ’s sake; you’d think Sylar has been starving the poor suffering boy. When Luke orders, he gets an obscene amount of food. Like how a sumo wrestler would order. The waitress probably thinks that Luke is high or something, but she writes it all down. Why should she care how much this crazy person orders? It just means a bigger tip for her.

The two of them make small talk. Sylar drinks his coffee and Luke is alternating between milk and orange juice, which is kind of disgusting, but Sylar doesn’t comment. When the food finally arrives (because it took for fucking ever; what, did they have to mill the flour themselves?) it takes up almost the whole table. Sylar is stunned at the sheer amount of food Luke ordered. There is no way that Luke can eat all of that. And it is all Luke’s; only one plate has Sylar’s food on it. Sylar looks at Luke and Luke is loving this. He looks like a kid in a candy store, like he doesn’t know where to start.

“There is no way you’re going to eat all of that.”

The kid looks at him defiantly and Sylar realizes what he’s just done. He’s dared the kid to eat all of it, even if it makes him sick. Sylar imagines more pulling over in the very near future. Luke shoves like three pieces of bacon into his mouth at once because he has no manners and because he can. Sylar rolls his eyes and eats his omelet.

Luke’s not even halfway through his meal when Sylar’s done and Sylar can’t figure out how he’s still going. He’s already eaten an insane amount of food and everything must be room temperature at best when he gets to it. Sylar grimaces into his half a mug of too cold coffee. The waitress must be on break, because she hasn’t come around in forever to offer him a refill. If she thinks she’s getting a fifteen percent tip, she’s out of her mind. That’s when he remembers the thing he thought about coffee last night and understands that Luke’s food isn’t cold. And Sylar didn’t even notice. Now the kid’s either going to think that Sylar’s loosing his touch or that he’s going soft because that’s not something Sylar would just allow.

He pushes his mug to the middle of the table and meets Luke’s eyes. He gives him the ‘why isn’t my coffee steaming?’ look and Luke doesn’t understand at first. And why should he? It’s not like Sylar’s ever given him that look before. But Luke’s a quick learner. He smiles wide and reaches his hand out. Sylar’s coffee steams and, all of a sudden, it’s a beautiful day.

When the waitress comes back, she asks if they need anything else. Sylar smiles, but it’s really more a baring of teeth, and says no. She gives them the bill and Sylar looks at it. That’s an insanely high bill for two people at IHOP. He looks over it just to make sure the waitress hasn’t messed it up. No mistakes and Sylar remembers the good old days when a person could eat their fill for way less than that.

“Next time you feel like eating a metric ton of food, warn me and I’ll keep driving ‘til we find an all you can eat buffet. This is ridiculous. You think I’m made of money, or something? When are you going to start contributing financially?” Sylar teases with a forced scowl on his face.

“I’ll contribute financially when I somehow acquire the ability to make money materialize out of thin air. Any ideas how I can go about making that happen sooner rather than later?” the kid quips as he’s finishing the last of his food. Sylar can’t believe that Luke actually ate all of that.

“Learn how to steal. As a person, you’re not a very good investment, like pouring money down the drain.”

“Yeah, but this drain keeps your coffee warm.” And Sylar doesn’t have anything to say to that. He puts the tip money on the table, not as much as he should but more than she deserves, and walks up to the register to pay. Luke sticks the last piece of toast in his mouth so he can put on his jacket and follows, then they get in the truck and Sylar starts the engine. Suddenly, there’s a spoon in front of his face.

“Did you steal a spoon?”

“You told me I had to practice. You didn’t even notice. I must not be half bad.” Sylar takes the spoon from him. Cocky bastard.

“You probably did it while my back was turned. ‘Eyes in the back of the head’ is not an ability I possess.” Luke laughs. Sylar turns the spoon into gold to shut him the fuck up. This amazed look comes over Luke’s face; like that’s the coolest thing he’s ever seen. Maybe it is. Maybe having infinite amounts of gold literally at a person’s fingertips is an amazing thing. Sylar’s kind of jaded about all of it.

Luke reaches out to touch the spoon, but stops before he makes contact to look at Sylar for the okay. That’s smart. Sylar could still be pumping juice into it and then Luke would be turned into gold, too. Of course, he isn’t and he nods at Luke. He takes it from Sylar’s hand and holds it like it’s so much more than a spoon from IHOP. And it is. Now it’s a golden spoon from IHOP.

“Why are you bitching at me about money if you could just, like, turn a bag full of rocks into gold nuggets and hock them?” Luke asks, but he’s still in awe and so the tone doesn’t really match the words. Sylar laughs as he pulls out of the parking lot. He stops the truck at a small park and reaches into the back seat for a plastic grocery bag he saw there. When he finds it, he tosses it at Luke.

“Are you serious?” He can’t tell if Luke’s excited about getting to watch Sylar turn a bag of rocks into gold or if Luke’s pissed that he has to go fill a bag with rocks in broad daylight when people can see him and wonder if he’s mentally disabled or something. Probably a little bit of both.

“Hurry up.” Luke rolls his eyes, but he gets out of the car. Sylar fiddles with the radio while he’s gone. When he looks up a few minutes later, a little girl is helping Luke collect rocks and Luke looks pissed. The girl looks happy enough. Sylar looks around until he sees the girl’s mother shaking her head sadly. Like Luke was so pathetic that he needs help filling a bag with rocks. It’s probably one of the funniest things Sylar’s ever seen. He isn’t going to let Luke live this down for all of eternity. When Luke comes back to the car with the rocks, Sylar’s still laughing.

“Yeah, it’s fuckin’ hilarious. Can we get out of here now?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think your play date is over. You haven’t let her push you on the swings yet,” Sylar says while he’s wiping his eyes, because he’s seriously laughing so hard he’s crying and he hasn’t laughed this hard in years. Luke tosses the bag of rocks into Sylar’s lap and that’s not pleasant. It stops the laughing at least. He sets the bag on the seat between them and drives away from the park. He starts chuckling again and Luke huffs in annoyance.

The next stop is a pawn shop, with a ‘Cash4Gold’ sign in the window, because Sylar wasn’t lying when he said he isn’t made of money. It’s been a while since he’s filled his wallet. He parks the car outside. He hates pawn shops. They always give you crap deals. But it’s like free money, so he really can’t complain. It beats robbing banks, even if showing up with a bag of gold rocks isn’t exactly low profile. Sylar dumps the rocks out on the seat and gives Luke the bag to hold open. He moves around a bit in his seat to have a better view of the rocks and picks up the biggest one. He turns it into gold and drops it in the bag. He hopes it hurts when it lands in Luke’s lap, but Luke doesn’t let on if it does. It takes a few minutes to change them all, but when he’s done, Luke is holding an insane amount of gold in a plastic grocery bag. Luke passes it to Sylar to carry, like holding it is illegal.

“You should totally go in by yourself. I don’t want to be there when the guy asks how the hell you have pounds of gold rocks. I’d probably stutter and look like a thief in training.” Sylar agrees. He gets out of the truck and takes the bag into the store.

It’s easier than Sylar thinks it should be. The cashier doesn’t even care. He just wants the gold. He offers Sylar a price that is even more extortionately low than Sylar figured it would be. Sylar says how he heard the price of gold was higher than that and begins to pack up his rocks. The guy makes a better offer, but it’s still not good. Sylar pinches his lower lip like he’s thinking about it. The guy says that that will just about break him cash wise, but that he can have a hundred bucks of store credit. Sylar agrees, because it’s not going to get any better.

He waits until he gets the cash before he looks around the store. Sylar’s not going to give the cashier the chance run off with the rocks or something without paying him. He folds the money once and sticks it in his inner jacket pocket, wondering what exactly he’s supposed to spend a hundred dollars on in this cesspit. He wanders over to the computer section, because he will need some things to fix that laptop with. He picks a few things, but still has money left. He sees a piece of crap handheld Space Invaders rip off and decides to get it. Just because.

When he walks out of the shop carrying his bag of computer crap, Luke is standing in front of the truck. He must have gotten fidgety stuck in the car all by himself. Sylar reaches in his pocket to grab the money he got. Luke’s eyes bulge like it’s the most cash he’s ever seen. And maybe it is. He hands the kids a few bills.

“Just in case you need to buy a bus ticket or food or something.” Sylar doesn’t understand at first what’s wrong with his words when Luke suddenly looks crestfallen, but then he goes over what he said and realizes that Luke thinks he’s being ditched. He takes the keys from his pants pocket and tosses them at Luke. He nods at the truck. Now Luke thinks he’s being ditched and given a stolen truck. God, Luke is so emotional. He opens the driver’s side door and gets in like he’s going to his own funeral. Before he can start the car, Sylar gets into the passenger seat and laughs. Luke sets the keys on the seat and rubs his face.

“You’re a dick,” he says, but he says it with sincere happiness in his voice. Sylar isn’t sure if that makes the words any less true.

“I got you something,” Sylar says as he pulls the video game out of the plastic bag. Luke takes his hands away from his face but his eyes are still a little watery. Luke sees the toy and gets this strange smile on his face. He takes it and looks at it.

“Why’d you buy me this?”

“The guy in the shop said he couldn’t offer me any more cash, but I could have some store credit. I couldn’t think of anything else to waste it on.”

“There wasn’t anything better than a piece of crap game that probably doesn’t even work?” Sylar hadn’t thought of that. It is kind of ancient.

“Then throw it out the window.” Luke turns around in his seat to put the game in the side pocket of his duffle bag. Sylar has the distinct impression that this action holds some significance. Luke settles back into his seat and buckles up before he starts the car. He says ‘thank you’ as he pulls out of the parking lot. Sylar grunts in response. When they’re on the highway and going in the right direction, Sylar puts his arm along the back of the seat and leans against the head rest. He shuts his eyes and hopes that the events of the last few minutes are symbolic enough for Luke to understand that Sylar will follow him, too.

 

They make some pretty good distance before Luke pulls off the highway and into the parking lot of a skeazy motel. Sylar goes inside to get them a room, a double room, damnit, and comes back out successful. They get settled in and Luke goes to take a shower. He didn’t have time this morning because Sylar let him sleep for too long. Sylar decides to pick up some pizza and hopes he’ll be back before Luke’s done. He doesn’t want to deal with ‘abandonment issues’ Luke right now if he can help it.

Sylar comes back with two pizzas because he’s hungry and they can eat leftovers for breakfast and Luke is still in the shower. He knows he shouldn’t, because he’d be pissed if the situation were reversed, but Sylar snoops in the side pocket of Luke’s bag anyway. The only things in the pocket besides the game are the IHOP spoon that Sylar turned into gold, a few pamphlets from rest stops and motels, and a rock. Not a gold rock, just a normal one. Luke is keeping souvenirs, like he’ll put them all in a shoebox when this is over that has ‘Road Trip with Sylar’ written on the lid in Sharpie. It should be weird, but it’s really kind of sweet, that Luke would want to remember this so much. He puts it all away when he hears the water turn off. If Sylar isn’t weirded out, he doesn’t want Luke to know that he’s even aware of the mementos. Sylar grabs a slice of pizza and turns on the TV. Luke comes out in boxers and a T-shirt and snags the second pizza before collapsing on the other bed. They watch Law and Order reruns and go to sleep at a more decent hour than last night. Sylar feels content.

 

They’ll be at the address Luke gave Sylar in two or three days. There’s a lump of dread slowly forming in Sylar’s gut. Either he’ll meet his horrible father who sold him or Luke will be proven wrong and Sylar doesn’t know which will be worse. Sylar pretends that he isn’t feeling anything at all. They pass the day in relative silence with the radio on because Sylar doesn’t want Luke to talk the whole time but he doesn’t want there to be no noise either. They get McDonald’s drive through for lunch and eat on the road. Luke plays with his game, because it apparently does work.

Twelve hours on the road and Sylar can admit it’s time to call it a day. He stops the car in front of another skeazy motel and is about to shut off the engine when the talking intro to ‘You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth’ starts playing on the radio. The woman asks if he’d offer her his hunger, and that’s when Sylar figures it out. He would give all that he is and all that he will ever be to Luke if Luke would just offer himself in return. Sylar looks at Luke when the man asks for the second time, “On a hot summer night, would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?”

And it’s like Sylar said the words because Luke smiles and tilts his head back, baring his throat. Sylar puts his hand on the back of Luke’s head and pulls him close so that he can kiss the pulse point on Luke’s neck. Luke puts his hands in Sylar’s hair. When Sylar finally gets around to buying them a room, it’s only a single room. And that’s okay.


End file.
